Six restricted records remained in the completion account

The six restricted product records were still on the report when the separation programme closed. They were not a rounding issue to be removed from a successful migration account. We had reviewed 420 product-history records, found thirty-seven provenance exceptions and resolved thirty-one through the agreed work. Six remained restricted. I wanted the receiving business to inherit that distinction as clearly as it inherited the files. The experience shaped the way I now explain a CIO's contribution: the system should preserve what a record means, including the part management cannot yet support.

I grew up in Shillong and completed a computer engineering degree at the fictional Nerzhali Engineering College in May 1996. My first job, from July that year, was implementation engineer at Dorzeli Factory Software. The company served regional manufacturers, and I worked in an eight-person delivery group without staff or budget authority. I learned to sit beside the person who used a transaction after the installer had left. The screen could behave exactly as designed while the operator and accountant understood the same field differently. That was a business problem expressed through software, and it stayed with me.

In October 2002 I moved to Belzhavi Packaging as applications manager. Six colleagues and an annual applications expense of ₹78 lakh became my responsibility. Working inside a manufacturer changed the time horizon. I could no longer treat acceptance of an installation as the end of the relationship. Month-end interpretation, product changes and staff turnover exposed assumptions that had been convenient during implementation. The appointment taught me to ask which function owned a definition and who would explain it when the original project team was no longer present. I completed a part-time enterprise systems diploma at Qervashi Systems Institute in November 2008 while remaining in that role.

Promotion to head of enterprise systems in April 2009 expanded the team to fourteen, with three leads, ₹2.4 crore annual expense and ₹1.1 crore approved programme capital. Belzhavi then had 410 employees and FY ending March 2009 revenue of ₹108 crore. I worked across plants and finance rather than own their operational or accounting decisions. The distinction mattered when a common reporting label concealed different local practices. I became more comfortable presenting a qualified comparison than forcing every site into a single apparent answer. Consistency in the interface did not remove the need to understand the business underneath it.

I joined Qelzavi Industrial Webbing in September 2015 as director of business systems for its subsidiary separation programme. The title was an employment designation and did not include a statutory directorship. Twenty-one colleagues and three managers supported the work, with ₹4.9 crore annual IT expense and ₹2.7 crore approved programme capital. The business needed its own systems account without losing the history required to operate. I learned to make the unresolved ownership of a record visible before the transfer deadline. A late exception was inconvenient; a silent assumption could remain embedded for years.

Since January 2022 I have been CIO, reporting to CEO Leela Zorvheli. Qelzavi employs 780 people and recorded ₹286 crore revenue and ₹24.5 crore operating profit for the year ending March 2026. Nerqavel Materials Group owns 76%, with an Indian regional investment trust holding 24%. Our Bhubaneswar organisation supports operations near Cuttack producing industrial textile webbing for non-lifting applications. My twenty-eight-person function has four managers. I do not approve lifting suitability, product release or accounting treatment. Operations leader Sanjay Belqathi and the relevant technical and financial owners bring different authority to the same business record.

My recent decisions include a six-week product-history transfer delay, a reporting correction that kept two measures separately labelled, and retirement of thirty software entitlements after reviewing their actual ownership. A fourth programme assigned custodians to retained business-record categories while leaving disputed categories under restriction. These are not interchangeable claims about transformation. Each concerns a different obligation that can disappear when information moves. I want the result and the unresolved remainder to survive together in the account presented to management.

I hold no statutory board seat and have not yet registered with the IICA independent directors databank. I am exploring whether this experience could help a first non-executive appointment, with eighteen annual days provisional and subject to employer consent. I would need further preparation and a company-specific eligibility review. A useful board contribution would question the enterprise assumptions behind a systems promise. It would not turn another company's IT team into my reporting line or treat familiarity with industrial applications as universal expertise in every technology, regulation or manufacturing process.

Open to Board appointments

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